Sylvia Plath's poems "Daddy"

Sylvia Plath's poem "Daddy"

In the poem "Daddy", Sylvia Plath says that there are women who, due to early conditioning, find themselves without the tools to deal with oppressive and controlling men. They are left feeling helpless and hopeless. For some women, the struggle is never resolved; others take most of a lifetime. For a lucky few, they are granted a reprieve. The speaker in this poem is Sylvia Plath. The poem describes her feelings of oppression and her battle to come to grips with the issues of this power imbalance. The poem also conjures the struggle many women face in a male dominated society (Plath, 25-198).

Sylvia Plath's poem "Daddy" shows the speaker of the poem desperately struggling with their feelings of vulnerability and powerlessness. Throughout the poem, the readers see the speaker attempting to assert their power, though never actually succeeding. In the first stanza of 'Daddy", Plath pens "You do not do, you do not do, any more black shoe" and this appears to inform the reader that no longer will she put up with the 'black shoe'. Though, as the poem progresses, we see emotions see- sawing and no longer do we feel that the speaker of the poem has the power, no matter how hard they try to gain it. In the line "I have always been scared of you", we are shown that the speaker admits that their father had a clear hold on them, and that he actually had the ability to control their emotions. We see further evidence that the speaker's feelings of control diminishing when they state: "At twenty, I tried to die, and get back, back, back to you"(Plath, 56-179).

The tone of this poem is an adult engulfed in outrage. This outrage, at times, slips into the sobs of ...